Penny for your thoughts, Eric
by beautifulramblingbrains
Summary: Eric gets spooked. (One-shot)


A little Divergent one-shot on the countdown to Halloween. Enjoy!

* * *

I was never a believer in ghosts. So, you could say I was slightly surprised when there was a point where I was almost convinced.

All my life, all I ever did was carry out specific orders under the premise of somebody else. The things seen despicable and contradictory to learning, were only ever what was expected of me. Half the people wouldn't be who they are, or where they are if they hadn't of undergone my labeled training programme. There wasn't anybody fit for the mark or willing enough who didn't want to have their name tarred. But I was always willing, always ready to try, and no matter what they said, fear worked. And it worked well.

It's because of that I believed that what was happening, at first, was just pranks. My office always had a stuffy, metallic smell each morning. I blamed it on the old walls and damp, perhaps metal beams rusting above one corner in the room which had stained the white wall yellow.

At the time I blamed the cleaner and would change personnel like I did my shirt. It never improved. If anything, it got… _worse._

Like my office, my laundry started to come back musty, a heavy feeling of too much detergent or overuse to the clothes. Sometimes I even lost shirts, and strangely, my boxers started to disappear.

I began to pull rank and put out a notice to let everybody know I was onto them. Nothing ever came of it, and it didn't stop. I began to buy new clothes each day; a heavy expense. And when I had time I started hand washing and leaving them to dry around my apartment. Like my schedule wasn't fucking hectic enough.

"Hello, Eric. Extra fries or extra greens?" Penny, a fifty-something canteen lady, would ask me every day. She wasn't all there; a smile too keen, her chubby, rosy cheeks flecked with grease and sweat and god knows what else. But sometimes, you just can't bring yourself to be mean to people like that. No matter how shitty or annoyed I'd been getting lately over laundry mishaps.

"You do know how to spoil me, Penny." My body would recoil to the sound of her giggle, the bright flush and paunchy way she'd wiggle on the spot. I wouldn't touch it with a barge-pole, but the woman served my food and took my orders, along with many others.

She was good. She knew what I liked and how seasoned I wanted my food. Eventually, I began to see Penny as just a person that would always be around, and her questions would vary from how my day was going to why such a long face. I brushed her off, though things were beginning to get worse.

My office clock started to read the wrong time. Every single damn day, it was wrong. That didn't worry me as much as the watch on my wrist strangely deciding to act up too. Not only did my watch never work after a nights sleep, I woke up one morning to my fridge turned off with an evil smell.

By now it was the same smell; the metallic, damp smell from my office, beginning to follow me home. I even imagined it on the end of my toothbrush just moments away from putting the thing in my mouth.

I was being haunted. I was now convinced. There is no way anyone could get into my apartment, let alone stop the watch on my wrist while I'm sleeping without me knowing. My phone was also being called and when I answered there was no one there - apart from one time, and it was someone heavily breathing. I tried tracking the number driven by blind rage, but they always hung up before I could get a trace. Funny that.

Items went missing from my office. My things wouldn't be in the same order I left it. To anyone outside of my personal bubble - which was everyone anyway as I can't tolerate people even on a good day, they would think I was insane. I thought about putting a guard in front of my office, have the security cams installed. Hours I spent trawling through anything that would give me a clue to what was happening but came up empty-handed.

I wasn't sleeping right anymore either. I began to have dreams about somebody watching me sleep, dreams about my cupboard door opening in my bedroom. That was a childhood fear, and someone was playing on it.

It was so bad that I didn't want to step foot outside my door anymore. Max allowed me a few days off work when I'd told him I was sick. My thoughts were if I could maybe just rest my over-worked brain for a few days I'd see everything a little more clearly, and not be jumping at my own shadow. Though, I had potentially just isolated myself. I was losing my mind.

I'd thought about a revengeful initiate, an old ex-girlfriend. Then I delve further; perhaps it was a casualty, a soul, coming back to haunt me.

God, how fucking stupid was I?

I almost believed in ghosts. Almost.

Penny visited me on my fourth day of being classed as ill. She brought me cookies, had heard I was unwell and thought to come visit me. My only visitor.

Looking back now, I'm a victim of my own character. Never should a person misjudge the supposedly weak.

I'm writing this now on the back of an old receipt from a new set of shirts and an idle pen I nudged down from the bedside table on maybe my second drug-induced day. I can't be sure though, she's kept me weak. And it's all because I've accepted my fate, lost a part of me, and know that there is no turning back - perhaps that: acceptance, of who we are and what will happen to us, is a part of being brave. If so, I hold my head up and can easily say, "I'm number one, Four, you absolute prick."

But never-the-less, somebody has to know, whether this letter is found or not. Maybe good old Penny will read this herself - You cunt. It will be days before anyone smells that stench radiating from my apartment now. One that I had smelt too late, biting into those delicious looking cookies, just after Penny had shifted more into my apartment without my knowing. My back was to her, just as the coils of evil curled its way into my nose.

"It's you," were the only words to leave my mouth through the doughy substance I'd swallowed, turning my head over my shoulder at her excited hop to each foot and hands clapping as I'd finally put the pieces together.

After that, I don't remember much else. It was obvious she'd drugged me, tied me up, and chained me to my bedroom radiator.

Through my consciousness I worked out the only way she was able to do it was by paying people off through the kindness of her cooking, giving extra tidbits to gain supposedly innocent access.

Nobody suspects the cook. And Dauntless always follow their gut.

I'm not good for much else anymore anyway. I can't be a Leader in the state she has left me. _That_ is what I have accepted. But I can't help but question the little things; like my watch, or the feeling of being spied on while sleeping, or why she bothered rooting through my things in my office.

My questions lead me to believe she was in my apartment the entire time or had been, at points, when I was here myself.

I'm just happy I didn't put the toothbrush in my mouth.

She'll be coming to finish the job soon, and I welcome it. I just wonder how long it will take people to notice exactly what they eating, or have been eating. What maybe _I_ had been eating.

But one thing I _do_ know… is that I smell _delicious_.


End file.
